


Much Like the Fireworks

by WritingFicariously



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Aurors, Cheating, Could Be Canon, F/M, Friendship, Pre-Epilogue, Sexy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28566456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingFicariously/pseuds/WritingFicariously
Summary: Together, they burst like bright colors in the night sky and just as quickly, fade into nothing.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Much Like the Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been finding sparks of inspiration late at night when no one is around but me and phone. Mistakes are mine; I’m only human.
> 
> I don’t own even a bit of the Harry Potter franchise.

* * *

People surround him in the Manor Gardens, flowing back and forth like the tides, but he ignores them, ignores the chatterings of the latest gossip and what is happening at the Ministry. Instead, he watches her, mesmerized by every move she makes. He leans back against the patio chair as his eyes follow the way her fingers press against the bottle of Butterbeer, fingertips sliding against the beads of condensation. When she brings the bottle to her mouth, her lips part slightly, and he focuses on the way she swallows. The tendons in her neck shift against each other and when she pulls the bottle away, she reaches up a hand and swipes at the lingering wetness on her lips.

“You’re staring, Malfoy.” Her voice is soft, flat, nothing like what he remembers from the night before. He raises an eyebrow, shifting to lean forward, to breathe in the familiar scents of honeysuckle layered with iris and vanilla. His eyes shift to the edges of a bruise that peeks out above the neckline of her shirt. “I’m serious, stop it.”

He takes another large breath of hair and picks up his tumbler of amber liquid, downing its contents as quickly as possible because he can’t think of anything else to do, can’t think of a reason not to look at her. His thumb rubs back and forth against the etched letters on one side of the glass, raising his left hand slightly to signal a house elf to refill it. As he takes another gulp, his hand moves from the letters to smooth glass that reminds him of Hermione’s skin beneath his palm as he stroked her skin, as she arched into his touch.

“ _Stop it._ ”

Draco tilts his head and locks onto her gaze, grey on brown, and fire burns through his body, races through his veins. “ _What_?”

Despite how she flinches at the sharpness of the single word, Hermione furrows her brows together. “You’re thinking about it. I can tell. Stop thinking about it.”

“You’re going to tell me what to think now?” He sets the tumbler down on the small table next to him and waves away the platter of food that appears in front of him. He moves to the edge of his seat, and his knee knocks against hers. “You wanted it, Hermione. You still want it, so why do you keep acting like you didn’t?”

“Don’t call me that in public,” she hisses, standing up quickly.

He scoffs at her. “We’ve been working together for six years now. I’ve long since called you by your given name.” He stands, reaching out to pluck the bottle from her hand to set it next to his glass. “In fact, I clearly remember saying it often last night, just as you -”

“ _Enough_. Stop the mind games, Malfoy.” A quick glance around tells her a few of the other guests - all Aurors, all coworkers - are beginning to notice the argument. “ _Excuse me_ ,” she says through gritted teeth.

She walks away, toward the Manor that is still imposing to her, even if it’s much lighter than it was during the War. She smiles at a few friends, brushing Neville away when he asks if she’s alright. “Just need to cool off a bit,” she says.

Draco is behind her when she walks past the sun room into one of the dining rooms. He keeps his distance but continues to stare at her. Her body is taut with aggravation, her hands tense as they tug at the spirals of hair that have escaped a clip. Palms move back to cup the back of her neck and her head drops in defeat. He watches as a change comes over her body, a slight drooping that tells him she’s given up.

“Hermione.” He says her name like a prayer.

“Last night,” she begins to speak but is interrupted when hands - strong hands, _warm hands_ \- move over her waist. Her breath hitches. “Last night can’t happen again.”

“Last night,” he repeats, “was perfect.” Her breathing speeds up as his hands slide to meet at her belly button, wrists flicking the fabric of her shirt up so skin meets skin. His mouth is at the top of her ear, his words puffing over her skin, sinking into flesh. His fingers crawl up her stomach, find the edge of her bra, tease the bow at its center.

“Don’t,” she protests, but it’s meek, like she didn’t want to say it. “Mal-”

He tsks, but his hands stall beneath the curve of her breasts. “Not my name. Not last night. Not now.”

“ _Draco_. Everyone is outside. We shouldn’t.”

Even as she says the words, her back arches, shoulders pressing into his chest, silently asking him to touch her. She feels his mouth move down the shell of her ear to that spot just below the lobe that makes her shiver. His breath is warm as he glides down the column of her neck.

“But we could.” Moving a hand from her beneath her shirt to her hair, he unclips her mane, watching as curls tumble over her shoulders. He moves it to the side and tastes the saltiness of sun-warmed skin, creates tattoos with his tongue. “But tell me why we shouldn’t and I’ll stop.”

Her head falls back against his chest, eyes falling shut. “Because _I_ won’t be able to stop,” she admits. “And I have to. I can’t do this to him.”

Draco steps away from her so quickly that Hermione stumbles to regain her footing. She feels a rush of cool air wrap around her body in his absence. He’s no longer touching her, no longer pressing warm kisses to her neck. When she spins to look at him, she takes a shuddering breath at the mixture of pain and anger that fills his eyes. Guilt swirls in her stomach, but she can’t decide what - or who - is causing it.

The anger takes over all emotions in Draco’s eyes for a quick second. “He does it to you,” he spits out. “All the time and you know it, but you still act like he’s your entire world.”

Shades of pink and red creep up from her chest to cover her neck and cheeks. The embarrassment comes quickly but still she insists, “He _is_ my world.”

Laughter bursts from the direction of the sun room, making the two of them tense up, but no one comes into the dining room. After a few minutes, the sounds of the party outside fade away, the door shutting behind whomever walked in and out for whatever reason. In the short span of time when Hermione was staring toward the back door, Draco had moved to stand in front of her. Fingers tilt her chin up with a softness that makes her heart clench.

“Last night,” he says. “Last night, you were free. Weren’t you?” His thumb rests against her bottom lip, pushing lightly until her mouth opens, until she can taste the remnants of sweet lemon against her tongue. “You didn’t care about anything but the two of us.”

She doesn’t respond, can’t respond, because she doesn’t want to admit that he’s right. She closes her eyes again, feels the heady rush of desire as she remembers the night before, when everything between them was comforting, needy, beautiful. She remembers how the heaviness disappeared from the fourth finger of her left hand, how she had practically melted into the navy sheets of Draco’s bed, how easy it was to welcome his body over hers, into hers.

“Last night,” he whispers, “you remembered what it was like to be wanted.”

Hermione searches for the right words to say but she can’t find them, not in the haze that clouds her mind, now when he’s so close she can feel the undeniable attraction between them. Her breathing has deepened and she feels her chest constricting, feels her throat closing up like she won’t ever be able to breathe again. His thumb disappears from her lips, quickly replaced by a warm mouth that breathes for her, around her, into her. The gasp escapes her and finds a new home against his tongue, his teeth, his entire being.

She forces her eyes open when he pulls away and he’s looking down at her with eyes that seem to sparkle as brightly as the diamond on her hand. Draco grabs her hand, bends her fingers as he lifts it to his mouth, and kisses her knuckles. He presses a thumb against the side of her ring and she swears she feels the angles of the rock scrape against her skin.

“You don’t have to wear this. This isn’t what you want.”

“How do you know what I want?” she demands.

The silence that surrounds them is heavy. He shifts his hand so he can nudge the ring back and forth, back and forth, until Hermione tries to pull her hand away. He holds steady, refuses to let her back up, to get away. He calls her name but her eyes focus in on their joined hands - hands that were pressed palm to palm just hours before. His fingers had slid into the spaces between her own, clenching in a tight grip as his hips rocked steady back and forth, back and forth, in a perfect rhythm, a perfect fit.

It was simple but powerful. There hadn’t been awkward fumbles as clothes disappeared, hadn’t been any pauses to try to stay balanced, hadn’t been any questions filling her mind like if they were right for each other.

“How do you know?” she asks again, quieter this time, because she’s scared to hear what he might say.

A large whoosh of air escapes his lungs before he answers. “Because you told me. Last night.”

Her head jerks back, a panicked look settling into her features. He moves both hands to either side of her neck, pressing up into her jaw. “Your kiss told me you wanted me.”

He drags his hands down to the top of her sheet, blunt nails scratching against that bit of light purple that peeks out from beneath the fabric. “Your bites, they told me you craved attention.”

She feels the pinch of his fingers on her nipples despite her shirt and bra, whimpers at the way he traces the outline of her breasts with sure hands. “You told me how much you needed me to praise you every time you made that sound.”

She feels his palms press tightly against her body as he moves his touch past her ribcage and over her waist and hips, until he spreads them so that one is splayed across her back and the other reaches down between her legs.

“You told me _everything_ when you let me in.”

Hermione swallows and tries not to feel sick. Not because he’s touching her. Not because of his words. No, she’s trying to control the nauseousness that is threatening to overtake her body because she hates that he’s right, hates that he knows her so well, knows that she doesn’t want what she’s been given, not when everything is supposed to be perfect.

“I’m right.” The hand between her leg begins to move, stroking her over the rough denim of her jeans. “You know I’m right.”

Widening her stance, she opens her eyes once more, locking onto his gaze. “I know.”

Draco says nothing. He just watches her, sees the emotions fly over her face one by one - guilt, need, embarrassment, uncertainty, desire - and waits. His hand still moves against her, feels the minute reactions that cause her to rock against him, but he still doesn’t say anything.

She wants to say so much to him at that very moment. She wants to tell him that she’s never felt more beautiful than when he pushed into her, hot and with an urgency that told her she could be his ruin. She wants to admit that she’d never felt sexier than when he grabbed her by the waist and settled her over his face, telling her to grab onto the heavy wood of his headboard while he buried his face between her legs. She wants him to know that she had never felt more powerful than when she held his cock and guided it into her body, moving up and down against his lap, until they were both tense and screaming and she had held herself steady as his hands held her still above him with the final jerks of his orgasm.

She wants to say so many things but if she opens her mouth now, if she lets words float out of her throat and into the room, she can’t guarantee that she’ll still be engaged at the end of the day, can’t guarantee that she won’t tear her world apart.

A series of chimes sound from the next room and Draco pulls away abruptly, turning to see who is coming in by Floo. Familiar voices, joking and laughing, filter in and with a glance over his shoulder, Draco disappears to greet the two new arrivals.

Hermione watches him as he leaves. She drinks in his body - lithe, lean, strong, commanding. She steps to her right just enough so she can see through the doorway. From where she stands, she can see the muscles of his arm move as he gives his guests handshakes that speak of respect and a sense of brotherhood, but beneath that, Hermione sees a spark of challenge, of jealousy and annoyance.

He’s beautiful, she knows. Draco has everything she finds attractive in a man - physically, emotionally, intellectually. It wasn’t always that way but the years of childhood rivalry passed and she’s learned just how perfect he could be for her. He has the ability to give her what she wants in a stable relationship, what she needs, and she knows he’d always be loyal. Her heart pounds like a steady drum announcing war.

In a moment of weakness, a moment that was the culmination of a growing friendship over the years, of hours researching cases, of learning each other - in a moment that might actually be pure bliss, Hermione knows she will never be the same again, not when the memories are burned into her mind. Her teeth sink lightly into her bottom lip and she feels beads of sweat form at the nape of her neck.

She can’t stop remembering. The flex of Draco’s hips between her legs is a cruel reminder of what her fiance will never give her, not with the same emotion. His mouth on her skin, at her collarbone, over her breasts, across her stomach, has planted blazing fires like tiny versions of Fiendfyre that won’t burn out. Hands, his worshipping hands, have left imprints on her soul.

When a shadow falls over her, she wishes it’s Draco returning to soothe the ache he’s created in her, wishes he’d demand to be her choice, to give her the one thing she doesn’t have the courage to take. But when she looks up, she sees blue eyes instead of the grey ones she craves.

“Ron,” she says simply.

“What time did you get here?” he asks, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “Get an early start with Malfoy?” It’s a tease but it causes a sharp slice of pain to her chest.

Hermione blinks, tries to unscramble the thoughts still running through her mind. Draco is leaning against the doorway, staring at her while he converses with Harry. His eyes are daring her to take control, to admit what she wants, to tell Ron the truth. She wishes she could, wishes she could slide the diamond off of her finger and place it in Ron’s hand, tell him good-bye. She wants to stride over to Draco, slide her arms around his waist, hide in the circle of his protective arms, and smile between heated kisses that make her believe she’s the only woman in the world.

Instead, she pastes a too-wide grin on her face. “Yes,” she agrees with Ron. “An early start with Malfoy.” She pauses. “He always knows what I need.” The words are supposed to be happy but she hears the hollowness in her voice and wonders if Draco can hear it, too.

She almost jerks away but manages to only flinch when Ron brings a hand to the top of her shirt and traces the span of skin. “What happened?” he asks. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Silent for a few moments, his words repeat in Hermione’s mind, over and over, like a gnat that won’t go away.

Did you hurt yourself?

_Did you hurt yourself?_

Brushing his hand aside, Hermione moves her fingers over the edges of the bruise, knowing that if she were to move her shirt lower, it would widen to the shape of fingers. She shifts her gaze, seeking out Draco once more.

“Yes,” she finally answers. Grey eyes stare back at her. “I hurt myself.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet states that her meeting with Romeo is “too like the lightning, which doth cease to be.”


End file.
